What would happen if Russian pre-dreadnought battleship Petropavlosk never hit a mine? Thus the famous Admiral Makarov was never killed and was able to participate in the coming Tsushima battle?
RJW was so ASBish, any change (especially as massive as keeping most able Russian admiral alive) is bound to produce an avalanche of consequences.
Try to assess what would happen on Western Front in WWII if Eisenhower, Patton, Monti are killed within 6 months of war and each V2 hit either major military command center, or main ammunition storage, or incapacitates main railway hub or port in Great Britain. That's essentially what happened to Russia in RJW. Number of Japan's lucky shots would make any self-respecting statistician cringe in disbelief.I agre that makarov surviving will have a major influence on the course of the war, but the odds were never quite as long as you seem to be suggesting.
I think that excepting a huge ASB like aliens abducting the entire Japanese fleet, Russia still would've been porked. Japanese shells were faaar more effective, as the Russians noted in their reports about Port Arthur and Tsushima, Russian fuses were defective potentially 80% of the time (estimate from a Russian officer on the flagship), the Japanese were faaar better gunners, and the Russians had older ships than the Japanese. I think if the Petropavlosk hadn't hit a mine and Tsushima hadn't happened, it would've been sunk at a later naval battle.
My information came from the statement of a Russian officer on board the Russian flagship at Tsushima published in The Mammoth Book of Naval Battles. The officer is Valdimir Semenoff and he remarks that he couldn't hardly see any hits at all on the Japanese fleet, meanwhile the Suvoroff was getting devestated.