Yep - That was my initial reaction too … See here for how I made it work for me (with actual improvement over my previous custom workspace).
Again, ditto for me … and a key feature of PL, for me, is that I we can choose to use sidecar/.dop files instead.
Since you’re already doing this (renaming images from outside PL), I presume you’re aware of the pitfalls of doing so whilst PL is actually running … Right ?
John M