Unless I'm wrong, I haven't found anything that suggests this is possible in VisualEditor yet.

It's tiresome switching to source editor any time you want to check that a link is in suffix form ("[[protein]]s") or in piped form ("[[Protein|proteins]]"). Additionally, there is no way to edit from piped form to suffix form purely in VisualEditor. More excess characters are being added to Wikipedia every day because of this lack of functionality. It also forces the user to point to a redirect ("[[proteins]]") if they want to save characters, adding more server load for Wikipedia.

Didn't know where else to add this suggestion but here. Even allowing VisualEditor to open a popup with a console of the link's source code would be better than nothing. Otherwise, an input box for suffixed text, as well as an indicator for whether links which contain part of a word (such as those with plurals) are suffixed or piped, would be ideal. The user's addition of a suffix using this box could then automatically remove the piped link, if there is one.