I think the straw you are looking through may be too narrow...had the US detected the Pearl Harbor, or any of the other Japanese fleets positioning themselves for the opening of hostilities, it probably would have activated Plan Orange with a fairly good chance that the Pacific Surface Fleet would still have been dealt to (taking as guidelines the fate of other surface fleet elements that engaged the IJN in open waters in late '41 and early '42) but with less (zero) chance for refloat and recovery as at Pearl Harbor.

It's unlikely that a surface confrontation , regardless of result would have resulted in a desperate option like the Doolittle Raid being adopted, which then would have meant no Midway as that was the Japanese response to Doolittle...thus better intelligence processing may have resulted in a worse result for the USN...careful what you wish for...