This week on the Unofficial One Piece Podcast they interviewed Josh Kocurek (marketing brand manager at Funimation) who just so happened to leak some interesting Toonami info.
According to Josh they’re shooting for “mid to late April” however they still haven’t decided where they’re going to start. Though he did say that “it’s either going to be something like Skypiea or they might jump straight to season 4.” Funimation hasn’t been told about the time slot either but I’m betting on 12:30 A.M. in-between Bleach premieres and Naruto. With this new info it seems like the Toonami crew is planning on premiering One Piece with the new Tom re-design.
You can check out the whole Unofficial One Piece podcast here.
Toonami Alliance 
Skipping the previous episodes and just jumping into the thick of season four? Bad move. One Piece is VERY continuity-heavy, and missing out on those older episodes would put first-time viewers at a great disadvantage. There are a number of story elements, “minor” characters and seemingly one-off moments in the earlier episodes that play very heavily into the stories of later episodes. It’s what Eiichiro Oda is best known for. While it may not be a particularly popular decision, I really hope that they start from the beginning and work their way up instead of throwing us into the metaphorical river without a paddle. It’d do the show the most good in the long run.
The Toonami Tumblr has debunked both claims made in this podcast.
I wouldn’t treat this as a debunk, but as a sign they just don’t want to ruin the surprise. They did the same thing with Samurai 7 when the public first heard it was taking over Deadman Wonderland. Just for the sake of possibly being wrong though, I will add a “?” to the title of the post.