For a polarized abelian variety, Z. Jiang and G. Pareschi introduce an invariant and show that the polarization is basepoint free or projectively normal if the invariant is small. Their result is generalized to higher syzygies by F. Caucci, that is, the polarization satisfies property (Np) if the invariant is small.In this paper, we study a relation between the invariant and degrees of abelian subvarieties with respect to the polarization. For abelian threefolds, we give an upper bound of the invariant using degrees of abelian subvarieties. In particular, we affirmatively answer a question about (Np) on abelian varieties asked by the author and V. Lozovanu in the three dimensional case.