It happened all the time in history. Like Lepanto, salamis, trafalgar, 4days battle.
In the time period the game is taking place it happend three times comes in my mind already without looking, at tsushima, Jutland and surigao straight.
But it could have happened even more. But the airplane (and mines) prevented it.
But if you decide you don't want to go for decisive battles build cruiser fleet and do cruiser warfare. If you design your ships well, just run from the enemy fleets