wade boggs chicken dinner said:
I'm not sure what you are getting at. Wells has a cap number of $0.00 this year thanks to the contribution. If they traded Wells, they would have to trade the contribution (I would guess) so I'm not sure how their cap number would be reduced.
This is correct.
Wells is not costing them anything this year. (Well, he's costing them the minimum, which is essentially nothing.) His entire reason for being in a Yankee uniform is the fact that the subsidy was structured to make his cost essentially zero for this year.
If the Yankees want to trade Wells, they'll do it because they have determined that staying under the cap is a pipe dream and they might as well not have a non-productive player on their roster. (This assumes that they will not be able to trade him without passing along the full subsidy.)